


Mixtaped

by aenor_llelo, InvaluableOracle



Series: For A Diamond Is A Marveled Thing [27]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Basically Pearl POV Of "Bubbled", Episode: s03e28 Bubbled, Gemsong, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Just A Side Of Resentment With A Dash Of Obsession, Most Every Adult In Steven's Life Was Really Kind Of Yikes Throughout His Childhood, One Shot, Oracle Regrets Nothing, Pink Diamond Never Learned How To Treat People Right And It Shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:20:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27754501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aenor_llelo/pseuds/aenor_llelo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvaluableOracle/pseuds/InvaluableOracle
Summary: "Dreams aren't real! They're just mixed up movies!"I've been... imagining things- without you telling me to.Pearl dreams. Pearl imagines. Pearlconfuses.(She watches Steven's frightened little body catapult through space, and the layered tape of her thoughts mix on.)
Relationships: Pearl & Steven Universe, Pearl/Rose Quartz | Pink Diamond
Series: For A Diamond Is A Marveled Thing [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604959
Comments: 11
Kudos: 159





	Mixtaped

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of a series. Please read previous parts for full context.
> 
> (Accessibility warning for vision or reading impaired: this work contains minor passages with exotic formatting. These are deliberate stylistic choices and are not intended to be visually/verbally coherent.)

* * *

Had this been the war-torn days of her prime, she could have taken out those five Rubies on her own in seconds.

A larger number of them like that is more difficult to manage than one or two, of course, but if she had muscles like humans, the memory of every Gem type’s weak spot would still be ingrained in them, even all these years later.

Rose made sure of that- she’s especially familiar with the weak spots of Rubies and Sapphires, thanks to her ~~Dḭ̸̡͇̳̖͂͒͝ả̴̻m̵̛̼̭̽̍͆o̸̞̜͝͠n̴̢̰͇͚̐d̴̝̄͠'̵͈̥̻̟̪̑͝s̵̡̨̘̓̽͂͠~~ leader’s worries in the beginning about Garnet turning on them. (She’ll never utter a word of her knowledge to the fusion- Rose had made sure of that too.)

~~Rubies have a habit of leaving their necks open to blows. The Era 1 sapphires, with their trademark singular eye, never saw her coming towards their backs.~~

The _point_ still stands- had Pearl been in top form, Sardonyx would have never been needed, ~~and Steven’s look of hopeless terror as he went flying towards the cold void of the stars wouldn’t still be drilling through the layers of her mind hours later.~~

Is he cold? Is he hungry? She can’t remember if he ate his breakfast this morning before they left Earth. His powers are weak and unpredictable, even with how far he’s come in using them- is he safe in his bubble, _or did it pop, leaving him to-_

No.

She won’t finish that thought.

_My baby,_ her helpless song rings. _My_ _baby._

She doesn’t quite remember when or how Steven became _my baby_ , instead of ~~the thing that stole Rose from me~~. She’d struggled with the _sight_ of him, back at the very beginning of his life- but as he’d learned to run and jump and play, he’d insisted on including her in his silly little songs and games, and she’d begun singing along.

Then he’d turned six, and Greg had turned him out onto the streets to play on his own, even though he could still barely remember his name most days- though, privately, she thought he was better off by himself at that point. Because she wasn’t blind, and it was obvious that Greg had been destroying himself more every day.

And she’d been content, of course, to make nothing of it ~~do nothing of it~~. _Let him_ , a dark song whispers, _let him destroy himself as he destroyed her. Humans live such short lives anyway._

But of course he couldn’t just drag himself alone and be done with it. Steven (so young, so dependent, so very, very _human_ ) had started to suffer the brunt of his father’s neglect even without the memory to complain of it. Sometimes he ended up playing with a human boy from town- but more often than not, she’d find him on the beach in front of the temple, poking at crabs or drawing archaic shapes he didn’t quite remember the meaning of into the sand. 

Archaic shapes under his hands, archaic song under his name. ~~A diamondsong.~~ She’d once asked him if he remembered the name he didn’t know he’d been writing, and he’d simply tilted his head in his adorably confused way, giggled like she’d told him a funny joke, and gone back to writing.

_Do you remember this place? Do you have…_ _any_ _of her memories?_ (His silent confusion had been answer enough, then. She wonders what it would be _now_ , if she asked again. ~~If she could have _dared_ , ever again.~~)

He hadn’t _belonged_ to the humans. (Not to Greg.) But they’d humbled Rose’s temple so humanly for his sake, to _house_ him in that human way.

And she’d told herself, _only for a while_. 

Only for a while. He would not need this forever. He was with Gems (with _Pearl_ ) now. He would come into his gem eventually. He would, in time, shed this organic pretense, one way or another.

He hadn’t been ready for missions yet when they finally gave in and let him tag along- that much had been clear. (They’d indulged him, she knew. She most of all, in many ways. It had been so easy to cave to his trivial little wants.) But he’d slowly come into his powers, even accompanying them to the moon- which was how they’d _lost him_ in space, watching helplessly as he was swept away, ~~his terrified screams silenced within his bubble.~~

Now it had been seven hours, thirty eight minutes, and twelve ~~thirteen fourteen fifteen~~ seconds, and they were no closer to finding him than they’d been seven hours ago.

_(My baby my baby my baby_ _my baby-)_

She was the only one of the three with any knowledge on piloting Homeworld ships, and so she’d plopped down at the controls, submerged her hands and her mind, and began a grid search for one terrified little boy in a pink bubble. 

But that was the thing about space- it is _vast_ , and her baby is _so, so small_ \- and though she has a general sense of which direction he flew off in, any movement or obstacle could have thrown him a different way- a thousand and countless ways. Garnet would try, of course, but Pearl had no great hopes that she could truly See it. ~~A Diamond blinds even the highest of clarities.~~

(She promises herself that she _will_ find a way to tell him the truth, some day. Once he’s home and safe and in his bed, she will search her mind for a way around yet another gag order settled onto her gem like a ~~sickening, shameful~~ layer of nacre. Not just him- she’s going to tell _all_ of them, even if the effort ~~cracks her~~. They all deserve the truth.) 

~~They’d both finally be free. _We’ll all finally be free._~~

But only ~~if~~ when they find him. ( _Only if you stay_ _alive._ ) Just a second longer, every precious, fragile, _mortal_ second longer.

She doesn’t know what they’ll do if they don’t find him- or worse, if they _do_ , find him, and he’s-

... _he’s_ …

_Stop!_

Her thoughts are pulled from their dark path when the ship’s alarms suddenly start blaring- lost in her mind, she’d steered them directly into an asteroid belt. _Lovely._ As she slowly navigates the ship through the obstacles, she spots a blur of red flying back in the direction of the base.

A Ruby? If it was, it’s a good sign that they’re going in the right direction. She focuses her mind on the task at hand, her hopes of finding Steven alive rising by just a fraction. (They’re not going back for that Ruby, though- absolutely not. She can stay out there and _float._ )

...It was Amethyst that saw him first. _Amethyst_ , out of all of them. (But of course, a soldier would have had the sharper eyes of them all.)

_Hers_ that had seen him. Steven and his little halo of a bubble, floating alone in the universe. Cold, alone, _so, so small_ . As she pulls the ship closer, he doesn’t react, staying curled up on his side with his eyes closed even as she opens the hatch and draws him in. Small and pale and _porcelain_ , little more than a doll.

(He looks _defeated._ ~~He looks like he gave up on them.~~ Simply waiting for the end to come, for the universe to swallow him whole.) 

_He’s so cold_. Foolishly, hysterically, she wonders if she’d stowed a blanket somewhere in her gem, as if that could somehow soothe at the thousand possible ills his human _, human_ body could have taken in the literal infinite expanse of space. (His gem mercifully uncracked, she knows. ~~Cracking a Diamond would be a terrible task~~. Her hand hovers over his shirt, regardless.)

Though he’s breathing, he remains unconscious for another several minutes, even as Garnet and Amethyst shout his name and gently shake him. (She wants to scream at them, to force them to stop- what if they’re making his condition worse?)

~~Stop, stop, _you’re hurting him_ \- ~~

But of course, what could she even say? (She’s just a Pearl. She’s useless on her own.)

Slowly, inevitably, a dazed query of a trill rises from Steven, blearily opening dark wide eyes. He looks up at Garnet, at Amethyst, at Pearl, past them and all the stars that pass them by.

He slowly sits up, relaxing into Pearl’s arms as she rocks him from side to side, taking in the feeling of his soft curls, the floral smell of his shampoo, the shaking hands that land on her back.

_I almost lost you, you were gone-_

After eight hours, seventeen minutes, and forty one seconds- a tiny blip in their eternity, but _so long_ in his short, fragile, _human_ lifespan- he is back in their arms, loved and safe, but she can tell that something has shifted within his mind. 

“How come nobody told me about Pink Diamond? Did Mom really… shatter her?”

_No no no no no no-_

“She had to.” 

(If only Garnet could know the truth.)

~~Dark wide eyes.~~

~~They look like diamonds.~~

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> ~~blame oracle~~
> 
> (yeah, that's fair. -oracle)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments, critique, your eternal suffering, and kudos all equally welcomed.
> 
> Join the Discord server for behind the scenes nonsense, yearning questions of my questionable literary choices, future stories, and how you can support our work! Or check out the twitter as well if you're interested in supporting us!
> 
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> 
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